TEC said-
I never said it was righteous to follow your heart. What if what is in your heart is darkness? I think that most of the rest of your post is based on that assumption. Is that right?
Abraham listened to GOD... believed and obeyed... and that was credited to him as righteousness.
Not his personal desires... or even his own heart... but GOD.
Mark this moment (once again), since Adam is agreeing completely with TEC.
Yup, that's it, in a nutshell: Abraham was declared "righteous" since he "listened, obeyed, and was blessed" by Jehovah for following his orders, and put his faith in Jehovah. EVEN WHEN God later asked him to kill his son, Isaac: Abraham followed orders and didn't stop to think of what was in his (Abraham's) heart: he was completely willing to kill his son since God asked him to do so.
That's the problem with faith: it represents a WILLINGNESS to follow orders in the name of a higher power without stopping to ask questions, or consulting one's own heart or conscience. Why bother, since one's own human conscience is irrelevant, since believers know that the Bible says that the human heart is treacherous, and cannot be trusted anyway: that's the whole "faulty compass" thing.
Hence why Jihadists trust in Allah, JWs trust in Jehovah's power to resurrect and die refusing blood (based on a lie), when we all KNOW there will be no do-overs, no second-chances for those lives sacrificed in the name of 'faith'.
SNR said- The people in soddom and grommorah didnt know yaweh even 'existed', neither did lot, for goodness sake Lot had sex with his daughters the day after he was saved.... But is still called righteous by the bible and YOU tec!
TEC Said- Lot knew, but that is beside the point.
Yeah, Lot was the 'prodigal nephew' who unlike the prodigal son, actually never returned to 'true worship', since he turned his back on the 'family religion (YHWH worship)' that he had been raised in under his Uncle Abraham (Lot's own father had died long before while they were still in the ancestral homeland of Ur, IIRC). The Genesis account says that Abraham had publicly thanked Jehovah for the victory over the Kings (when he liberated captured Lot earlier), but the inhabitants didn't accept YHWH as their God.
Oh, and per the Genesis account, Lot was so drunk he didn't know that his daughters snuck in to lay with him.... Two nights in a row.
(Plus, later Mosaic law required 'two witnesses', and the daughters weren't confessing NOTHING!)
TEC Said- Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed simply because they did not know the God of Abraham existed... but rather because of the cries that had gone up to God BECAUSE of the actions of that town. Because of the blood that town had spilled of others, and perhaps even the innocent among them.
Yeah, there's plenty of extra-biblical stories and Hebrew myths that sprung up around the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which I discuss in the blog article (link above). I suspect that the main reason behind the legends is much like how the stories of Paul Bunyan serve as a way to explain the natural appearance of America (eg the Grand Canyon is said to appear as it does today as a result of Paul Bunyan dragging his axe in the ground).
TEC Said- Does a person need to know God to know that raping/spilling the blood strangers that come into your town is wrong? God acted on behalf of the innocent BEING harmed and destroyed. The blood of those who had been harmed/slain cried out to Him, same as Abel's did. In the story, the two angels were sent to investigate, giving anyone the opportunity to prove their own righteousness, by doing good to those strangers. (do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it) But according to the story, it was Lot who took them in, trying to protect them. Every other man, young and old, came to do them harm, and harm Lot also for protecting them.
That's all conjecture, of course (and smacks of moral relativism), but remember that Lot and Abraham were foreigners living in a foreign land as aliens (non-citizens), where the inhabitants worshipped their own Gods and had their own customs. The story smacks of religious hegemony, since it wasn't like they had any authority to move into a foreign land and expect others to worship their Gods, and adopt their customs, etc. It would be like S. Americans who cross into the States illegally, and expect us to become Catholics, do things like they're done in Guatamala, etc, etc.
In fact, I suspect that's likely the intent of the story of Lot in Sodom: the account was designed to stress the point that given the circumstances under which the account was written (during or after captivity in Babylon), the Jews were strangers living immersed in a foreign culture against their will, and Lot was the poster boy of a boisterous outsider who didn't exactly fly under the radar and lay low, but instead made a showy display of his strange customs and was clueless to how he fit into the surrounding culture: instead of being rewarded for his cluelessness and sticking to "true values", he was made the anti-hero who VIOLATED those same principles every chance he got. The story ends with him becoming the forefather to the enemies of the Chosen People.
Of course, the author's intent was likely lost on the author of 2nd Peter (who wrote his epistle some 1,000 years AFTER the Genesis account was written (!), relying on the Greek Septuagint, no less....), who declared Lot to be not a heel, but a hero (AKA a righteous man) to fit into Xian theology. Of course, Lot didn't make Paul's heroes of faith list, so there's another NT contradiction (as well as the OT/NT contradiction).
Adam
